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1: INTRODUCTION

“If nature can turn night into day, then it can easily turn your
burden into a blessing” Anonymous

We see many
occasions when we are down and depressed and are convinced that the
way out is only through walking with our terrible burdens in a miasma
of despair. However, it does not always have to be this way because
many times our burdens are not burdens as such, but actual blessings
in disguise.

Nevertheless, we are
so fatigued with looking at the burden that we do not even see it for
what it is, an outright blessing in disguise.

You may consider the
fact that your kids are giving you a really tough time since early
morning and they refuse their breakfast and don’t want to go to
school and as a consequence, you may feel tired, distraught, and
jaded.

However, when you
did eventually manage to bustle them into your car, did you see the
look of wistfulness in your neighbor’s eyes as you passed her by,
because she does not have any kids of her own, in spite of being
married for over a decade.

Yes, it is all too
easy to slip into a bad mood on a day when nothing seems to go right.
But the fact is that what you may consider a burden is actually a
blessing in so many ways if you but stop to consider them as such.

The story of
Helen Keller

Let us hearken to
Madam Helen Keller’s iconic words:

“When one door of
happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the
closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

This was a woman who
had been born with the gift of sight and hearing but lost both at a
very young age, in fact, even before she understood that each object
has its own separate identifying word. Yet she used her disabilities
to become not disabled but “differently able.” She became a
lecturer, a women’s rights activist, a vocal voice for the blind
and the deaf as well as the working classes.

She used her unique
position as a deaf and blind woman to “open the eyes and ears” of
the world who cared little for the plight of such people. So powerful
was her voice that it resonates to this day and she is now known
globally as arguably the most famous deaf and blind person who ever
lived.

In spite of the fact
that she was living in a world as silent as it was absolutely dark,
she refused to let this be a burden but rather considered it a
blessing because it allowed her to make an impact for the silent ones
who had no voice.

If this brave woman
who had lost so much, at so early an age can consider her crippling
disabilities to be a blessing rather than an onerous burden, who are
we to complain about the petty things in our lives?

Gravity is my
enemy: The legend of Mark Hicks

Young Mark was only
12 years old when he had fallen off a tree and severely damaged his
spine. He had become a quadriplegic for the rest of his earthly life.
In other words, he had lost all sensation in not just all four of
his limbs but his whole body, from the neck down.

Most people would
have been crushed under such a terrible burden. But not Mark. On the
contrary, he used the time he had lying in bed, to create a wonderful
world full of vibrant colors. He started creating art by holding a
pencil in his mouth. Slowly, as his artwork improved, his popularity
grew till he became a very well-known artist in his own right and he
went on to join the world famous University of California Los
Angeles; a varsity so strict, that their acceptance percentage is
well below twenty percent. A documentary on his life won an Academy
Award back in 1978. When quizzed about his life, he very quietly
replied that everything he had been able to accomplish may not have
happened had he led a normal life, with his limbs intact.

The people above are
a far cry from most of us and they teach us a really great lesson;
that the heaviest and most crushing of burdens can become actual
blessings in disguise if we were to allow them to do so.

Most of us are very
lucky indeed, that we have full use of all our faculties, which by
itself is a truly great blessing in itself.

Reflect on your
present blessings, on which every man has many, not on your past
misfortunes, of which all men have some

Charles Dickens (M.
Dickens, 1897, p. 45)

2: COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS: HOW GRATITUDE CAN HELP
US OVERCOME ALL OUR BURDENS

The word gratitude is essentially derived from the Latin root gratia
that means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. If we are truly
grateful for our blessings we will never feel that we have any
burdens. Let us study the parable of the “Unhappy Emperor”

The legend of the
unhappy Emperor of Japan

Long ago in ancient
Japan, there once lived a very unhappy Emperor. He was so burdened by
the affairs of state that he thought he will never be happy again. He
called out to all the physicians in near and far away lands, to
advise him of a way to get rid of his malaise. They all failed, till
one wise old man told him that “he will only be happy when he wears
the shoes of a man who is happy from morning till night and from
night to morning”.

Duly inspired the
Emperor sends his troops all over the Island chain to look for a man
who was happy, 24/7. However, no one was able to find such a person
as just about all the people said that they were unhappy at least at
some point in their lives. Till at last, they came across a fisherman
who was happy from morning till night and night till morning. The
emperor’s soldiers watched him from some distance away as he went
about his work, pulling his fish nets while laughing and singing all
day long.

At last, they
approached him and asked him if he was always happy, to which the man
replied in the affirmative. “Your shoes, quickly’ said the
soldiers. The fisherman merely laughed out loud and said “But good
sir, I have never owned a single pair of shoes in my entire life”

The moral of the
story is that how we look at our burdens is what makes us happy or
sad, as the case may be. The Emperor had a whole nation at his beck
and call and the vast riches of an empire and yet he was not happy,
while the poor fisherman, who had nothing, merely made light of his
burden and saw it as a true blessing that he had no responsibilities
or riches to guard against.

It is ultimately our
own perception of the world around us that determines our happiness.
The often repeated cliché “well, look at the bright side…”
certainly has a lot going for it to this day. How many of us have
used it to cheer up someone who is feeling down and depressed? In
fact, it is practically a knee jerk reaction when we see someone who
is upset for any reason. It basically means that one should look at
one’s burdens as blessings.

The miller of the
Dee

The miller of the
Dee is an old English poem whose writer has long since being lost in
antiquity. It denotes the story of a miller who was always happy
though he was quite poor, while the great King Hal of England envied
him his poverty:

There dwelt a
miller, hale and bold,

Beside the river
Dee;

He worked and sang
from morn till night-

No lark more blithe
than he;

And this the burden
of his song

Forever used to be:

“I envy nobody no,
not I -

And nobody envies
me!"

Since he had nothing
to boast of and was a simple man with simple means he was convinced
that no one was jealous of him or envied him in any way. For him, his
very poverty was a blessing rather than a burden.

“Thou’rt wrong,
my friend," said good King Hal,

“As wrong as wrong
can be,

For could my heart
be light as thine,

I’d gladly change
with thee.

And tell me now,
what makes thee sing,

With voice so loud
and free,

While I am sad,
though I am king,

Beside the river
Dee?"

The King of England
heard him singing this refrain and said that he wished that he was as
carefree and as light of heart as the good miller. This is because
the King was burdened with so many matters and issues that he would
have simply loved to change his place with that of the “miller of
the Dee” and be free of his terrible responsibilities.

The miller smiled
and doffed his cap,

“I earn my bread,"
quoth he ;

“I love my wife, I
love my friend(s),

I love my children
three ;

I owe no penny I
cannot pay,

I thank the river
Dee,

That turns the mill
that grinds the corn

That feeds my babes
and me."

The miller simply
said that he had but his three children and wife to take care of and
neither did he owe any money to anyone, which is why the mill was
sufficient for his frugal needs as well as those of his household and
he wanted nothing more but was content to be blessed with such a
life.

“Good Friend,"
said Hal, and sighed the while,

“Farewell, and
happy be ;

But say no more, if
thoud’st be true,

That no one envies
thee ;

Thy mealy cap is
worth my crown,

Thy mill my
kingdom’s fee ;

Such men as thou are
England's boast.

O Miller of the
Dee.

Finally, the king
left the miller with the message that he was proud to have such
subjects in his kingdom and his dusty old cap was worth more than the
King’s crown; weighed down as it was by so many different
responsibilities. Furthermore, the king claimed that he envied the
Miller because of how light a burden he found his poverty while the
King’s vast wealth and riches weighed him down so much.

The lesson we can
learn from the above poem is that it is ultimately our own perception
of our burdens and blessings that define our emotional and mental
health. Most people will not think twice to take the King’s place
and become rulers in their own right. But, the King himself envied
the simplicity of the miller’s life who owed not a penny to anyone
and was content with what he had rather than being covetous and
demanding more. For this simple man, happiness was a hard day’s
work and then sitting down to a simple meal with his small family.
For the miller of the river Dee, not having riches and power was not
a burden, but an undisguised blessing.

3: HOW COUNTING YOUR BLESSING CAN MAKE YOU LIVE A
HAPPIER LIFE

Many of us refuse to see the ‘silver lining’ on the cloud’ when
we commence a recitation of all of life’s wrongs. However, the more
negatively we think the worse our condition becomes. This is a
vicious cycle that does not lead anywhere. But on the other hand,
once we start counting our blessings and feel a sense of gratitude,
then the odds are we will become increasingly more optimistic about
our future as well as the present in which we live.

This sense of
gratitude about even simple everyday things in life; such as waking
up to a glorious sunrise or for that matter, getting to work a few
minutes earlier due to a lack of traffic may actually make us feel
better regarding the innate groundswell of positivity that exists
deep inside all of us. And of course the more positive and optimistic
we are, the better our overall outlook on life will be.

The legend of
Alexander Graham Belle

This genius of a man
was born to a deaf mother and went on to marry a deaf woman. His
belief in ameliorating the life of the deaf led him to create many
devices that could help the hard of hearing, till finally the stellar
work he did led to the creation of the first operational telephone in
human history, way back in 1876.

He firmly believed
that the deaf of the world did not have to live in a well of silence
all their lives, at least not if he could help it. Had he allowed
himself to be crushed by the twin burdens of both his mother as well
as his wife’s illness, the modern telephone may never have been
invented. It was his unique ability to see his burdens as a blessing
that ultimately ushered in the era of seamless communication from one
end of the world to the other.